How do you imagine your child will turn out? This morning on RTE Radio 1, Miriam O’Callaghan spoke to mother “Sarah” about her daughter Kelly who was born a boy.
“Sarah” who features in a new Irish Times series Trans Kids explained to RTE listeners that she is remaining anonymous to protect her daughter.
“She doesn’t want to reveal herself, so I respect that, as her mother I want to protect her. If she feels ready to reveal herself as transgender we will support her 100 per cent but for now I’m not going to make any decisions.”
Kelly has just turned 8, she has an older sister and a younger sister and has lived as a girl for several years.
After previously suffering a miscarriage, the couple were relieved to be told that all looked well and that they were expecting a son at the 20 week scan. “Sarah” had a strong bond with her grandfather and decided to name her baby after him.
“So we planned our little boy’s life and everything went from there. He was a happy and healthy child and we were over the moon.”
“He was a very happy toddler. From a very young age he was making girl choices…from about 18 months he was always going for girly things, and we were fine with that.”
Jake loved dressing up and wigs:
“We wondered was he gay because he was so flamboyant.”
Soon Jake was asking a lot of questions about boys and girls and the differences between the two.
“It struck me that I was having these intense conversations about gender with a 3-year-old.”
“I noticed that Jake was very happy to be mistaken for a girl.”
As the time to start school approached “Sarah” found daily things like getting Jake dressed in the morning in his boy’s uniform, or having haircuts all became very difficult. “Sarah” worked to reinforce ideas about equality for Jake.
“It’s okay to like pink and be a boy, girls can like trucks.”
A moment of clarity came one day when Jake, aged 4, was distraught and cried to his mother:
“It’s not fair mama, I’m never going to be who I want to be. I’m a boy on the outside; people expect me to be a boy, but I’m really a girl inside.”
“Sarah” began to make sense of what her son was experiencing. She explained that some people change and described how he sat bolt upright. “It was like he had just been plugged in.”
He immediately started planning; he wanted to give away all his “boys things”. “Sarah” had no idea what to do.
“I emailed people all over the world, trying to discover what to do.”
If she tried to slow the process down, Jake would talk about taking his own life. “She started talking about wanting to die and wanting to take her own life and I was beside myself.”
They began to slowly tell people what was going on with Kelly:
“I have such respect for people who are coming out… the process of coming out is so difficult,” says “Sarah”.
“I was really afraid that people were going to blame me. My parents are very religious, and they embraced her from the get go.”
The process of transition was also a grieving process for “Sarah”. Kelly could see the struggle her mother was going through and told her:
“I never really changed I’m still the same person.”
“Sarah” credits the Educate Together school that Kelly attends for allowing her to be herself:
“The anxiety and the stress levels fell away when she was able to just be.”
She describes how navigating bureaucratic scenarios with a child who on paper was a boy but looked like a girl was stressful and often resulted in ignorant comments. However, she also experienced touching moments of acceptance, when gracious strangers surprised her. They have now changed Kelly’s name.
The next challenge facing Kelly is puberty. Puberty blockers are a measure to delay the onset of puberty. Some may see this as a radical intervention but for “Sarah” it is a “life-saving treatment” for her daughter who has told her, “if I have to grow up to be a man I will kill myself”.
Dr Donal O’Shea, Consultant Endocrinologist at Loughlinstown Hospital also spoke on the show:
“For these children puberty is extraordinarily distressing… if they don’t get treatment at the early stages of puberty then there will be problems.”
O’Shea states that between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 20,000 individuals have gender dysphoria, so it is a “relatively common condition” and that patients are presenting for treatment younger than ever. 15 years ago the average age was mid thirties, now it is early 20s, according to Dr. O’Shea.
“It’s definitely getting younger; it’s only being recognised more now. (In the past) A significant amount of youth suicide may have been linked to gender issues that were unexplored.”
“Sarah” speaks of the need to connect with others in similar situations:
“I wish I’d known then what I know now. I wish I’d had somebody to talk me through and reassure me.”
The Transgender Equality Network of Ireland (TENI) has details of further health support as well as parental and local peer support groups across the island of Ireland. See www.teni.ie or contact (01)8733575.
